


The Cult

by Orinoco_II



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Gen, Team Adventure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:02:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28408956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orinoco_II/pseuds/Orinoco_II
Summary: Secret cults and alien artefacts really don’t mix.  There’s something disturbing going on in the woods and Andy’s getting a promotion.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 52
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

6.57pm and the Bevin house was in chaos yet again. Dominic, interests at age ten narrowing by the day to the shelf beside the television where his video games were kept, sat half a metre from the 48-inch screen, only his thumbs moving as he blasted his way through a dystopian urban future. Behind him, Luke, six and high on too much ice cream after dinner, ran maddening laps around the living room, kitchen and hall in his pyjamas.

Sandy Bevin stood amongst the chaos, empty washing basket balanced on her hip, and closed her eyes. Taking a deep, preparatory breath, she let rip. “Luke! Get upstairs now!” Her bellowing had frustratingly little effect. She made a half-hearted attempt to grab the collar of her son’s pyjama top as he whizzed past laughing.

Footsteps thumped down the stairs and, a moment later, Lizzie – twelve but already a teenager – came storming into the living room. “Mum, it’s not fair!”

“What isn’t?” Sandy asked with a sigh, putting the washing basket down and picking up the first sock from the laundry pile in the armchair.

“You said I could watch TV at 7,” Lizzie whined.

“You can,” Sandy assured her. “Dominic – you need to get ready for bed now.”

Unsurprisingly, she received no response.

“Dominic? Did you hear me?”

“I’m just finishing this level,” he replied blankly.

“That’s what he always says!” Lizzie complained, throwing her hands in the air and herself onto the sofa.

Sandy poked her head around the doorframe into the kitchen, where their father was leaning against the surface, still in his work suit and tie, fingers tapping out a message on his phone.

“Michael – can you get Luke into bed please?” Sandy asked.

“Yeah, just a sec,” he replied, eyes still on his phone. No wonder Dominic was so screen-addicted.

Sandy plucked another sock from the washing pile. Luke shot past her again as Michael’s phone began to ring.

“Tony – hi.” Michael walked into the hallway, phone pressed to his ear.

The volume of Lizzie and Dominic’s argument over television rights was increasing, as Lizzie attempted to block her younger brother’s view of the screen.

“Lizzie, move out of the way and let him finish his level,” Sandy told her daughter wearily.

“He’ll start another one,” Lizzie protested. “He always does.”

“No, he won’t – will you Dom?”

Michael stuck his head through the living room doorway. “I’m going out,” he announced.

“What? Now?” Sandy asked, dropping the socks and following him into the hallway.

“Tony just called,” Michael explained, taking his coat off the hook and pulling it one.

“Seriously?” Sandy asked, incredulous. “Why do you always go running when Tony calls?”

“It’s important.” Michael grabbed his keys off the hall table. “Something’s come up.”

“You’ve been so weird since you joined that bloody cult,” she snapped.

“It’s not a cult,” her husband corrected her testily. “It’s a religion. You have a religion. It’s the same thing.”

“I go to church on a Sunday,” Sandy retorted. “I don’t go running off to worship aliens.”

“Don’t be so bloody patronising,” Michael spat, finger jabbing at her aggressively. In a convincing impression of his daughter, he stormed out of the house, slamming the front door behind him.

Sandy threw up her hands and went back into the living room, just in time to see Lizzie pulling the plug out of Dominic’s game console.

“I hadn’t saved that!” he screamed, launching himself at her.

Stepping over her wrestling children, Sandy despairingly scooped the rest of the washing into the washing basket. Gathering all her resolve, she reached out and grabbed Luke as he ran past, carrying him kicking and screaming up the stairs. If there was only one person in this household small enough for her to physically manhandle, she was damn well going to take advantage of it.

*

The group were predictably gathered by the open kitchen hatch as Michael entered the community centre. He ambled over to join them, grabbed a chipped white mug and dumped a teabag in it.

“No biscuits?” he observed, disappointed.

“It’s Kevin’s turn,” Caitlin explained.

“And you can blame Logan for the weird nut milk,” Amira added.

“It’s almond milk,” Logan protested. “Better for you and for the environment.”

“It makes my tea taste weird,” Amira retorted.

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Martin mused sanguinely.

The double doors at the end of the hall burst open and Kevin scurried across the squeaking floorboards, anorak flapping. “Sorry I’m late but I do have chocolate Hobnobs!” he declared, waving the packet of biscuits.

They were an eccentric bunch. Aside from Michael, a middle-class family man in a dishevelled suit, and Kevin, the classic bespectacled, nerdy oddball, there was Stan, hair bleached as white as his gaunt skin, brain addled from a decade of drug abuse, and Caitlin, with her eager, round, red cheeks, who forced unnecessary jokes about her sexuality into every conversation. Then there was Steven, with the Nazi tattoos and skinhead – he’d told Tony that he’d been reformed and no one dared to question him. He barely spoke, but was always cracking his beefy, tattooed knuckles. Beside him, incongruously, stood Martin, a nervous ex-vicar in his early thirties, and Amira, just turned eighteen and exercising freedom from her strict Pakistani parents. And then there was Logan, a dreadlocked environmentalist who wore flip-flops whatever the weather and always smelt suspiciously damp.

“Are we ready guys?” Tony called from the opposite end of the hall.

And finally, there was Tony. Their leader. The man who had gathered this ragtag group of misfits together and inspired them to believe in a common cause. Tony was a few years younger than Michael, broad-shouldered and no trace of grey in the dark hair he kept swept back off his face. There were flecks of white in his short, tidy beard though and his accent had a hint of Irish in it. Michael wasn’t really sure what Tony did by day. He sometimes turned up to meetings in a suit so presumably he had a respectable job of some description. They’d never really chatted about it. It didn’t seem necessary. 

The one thing Michael could say for certain, however, was that Tony had that natural authority that some men seemed born with. When Tony was ready, they were all ready. With much chinking of cups and saucers, the group deposited themselves onto the orange plastic chairs that Tony had arranged in a circle.

“Sorry to call you all at such short notice but this couldn’t wait,” Tony told them.

He reached into the Tesco bag-for-life that was sitting at his feet. The group shifted forward in their seats in synchronicity. Slowly, he withdrew an object. Lumpy and awkwardly-shaped but with its edges worn smooth, the green and purple swirls on the brick-sized gemstone seemed to shift as you looked at it and it gave off a pulsing light. Caitlin let out a loud cry and several others gave sighs of amazement. Even Michael found himself letting out an involuntary gasp.

“We have been sent a sign,” Tony intoned solemnly.

“I can sense its power,” Caitlin cried, clasping a hand either side of her head and closing her eyes as she began to shake.

Martin's eyes widened in alarm. He reached out a tentative hand towards her. “Are you ok?” he asked.

“The holy spirit has come upon me,” Caitlin declared, still rocking and shaking.

Amira gave a dismissive shrug. “She says that a lot,” she explained.

Martin looked a little concerned but withdrew his hand. The rest of them watched her for a moment. Her convulsions didn’t seem to be subsiding.

Michael cleared his throat and decided to move things along. “Where did it come from?” he asked.

“I found it at the ruined Abbey in Llandaff,” Tony told them. “It was calling to me.”

Kevin shuffled to the edge of his chair and peered at the stone through his thick, grimy glasses. “What does it mean?” he asked.

“I think it’s clear,” Tony stated certainly. “It’s another sign that Jesus will be here soon. He has sent us this message as a warning.”


	2. Chapter 2

Detective Inspector Arthur Robinson was trying a new look for Saturday policing. He’d studied the dress code policy and considered himself to be well within the realms of 'loose interpretation of the rules'. If they were going to make him work weekend shifts, they could at least let him look good whilst doing it. In any case, he doubted any of the sad sacks who worked at Cardiff Central Police Station would have the balls to challenge him on his clothing.

He'd gone for a pair of black skinny jeans (even at thirty-five, he still had the legs for them), brand new flame-red-and-white Nike Jordans and a sleeveless black, glittery hoodie which showed off his biceps (no t-shirt tan-lines for him, even in winter). Waltzing into CID forty-five minutes late, holding his takeaway coffee aloft, he breezed down between the rows of dreary desks towards the enclosed cubicle that served as his office.

“Morning Mandy,” he greeted his sergeant as he passed by her desk.

“Morning sir,” Mandy replied, with hardly a glance at him. They’d been working together too long for her to be ruffled by his lateness or his wardrobe. “HR sent the applications up. I’ve left them on your desk.”

Arthur paused, hand on his office door, and frowned. “Applications?” he queried.

“For Terry’s job,” Mandy explained, with the weary tone of someone who had already explained this at length. Terry had been their DC; an overweight divorcee with as much aptitude for police work as a pot plant. He’d taken early retirement last month to work in B&Q. Arthur had no doubt that Terry would be far better equipped to advise the public on bathroom fittings than he ever was at solving crimes.

Nevertheless, Arthur had assumed that his role in this change of personnel had been limited to the, quite frankly, outstanding speech he’d given at Terry’s retirement party; a shabby office gathering with paper cups and sausage rolls from the M&S food hall round the corner. Arthur groaned. “Do I have to do it myself?”

“Yes,” Mandy said, brooking no argument.

Duly told, Arthur sank down into the plush chair he’d had hand-made at Bampton's and swung his feet up onto the corner of his immaculately tidy desk. Taking a sip of coffee and then setting it down on a coaster, he reached for the pile of applications that Mandy had left for him and flipped idly through them.

He stopped when one name caught his eye, typed in block capitals across the top of the form: ANDREW DAVIDSON. Arthur caught his lip under his teeth and considered the name, intrigued.

*

The crumbling walls of Llandaff Abbey created unusual shapes against the bruised afternoon sky. It had only just gone three o’clock but the deepening clouds were gathering in the evening darkness a little earlier than usual. It was starting to drizzle again and Gwen Cooper turned up her collar against it as she ran her scanner over the ruins. Trees had erupted upwards where the roof would once have been and brambles and ivy clawed their way out through the empty windows.

A few paces away, Jack and Ianto were similarly scanning the wet grass and tumbledown stonework. The Rift alert at the old Abbey had come through yesterday but, having ascertained nothing dangerous had appeared, they had put off investigating it until they had dealt with a few more pressing issues.

Gwen’s scanner suddenly began beeping wildly and she stopped. “Signal’s strongest here,” Gwen called, wiping the layer of raindrops off the screen with her sleeve. Jack and Ianto approached expectantly. “No sign of anything though,” she added, poking her toe half-heartedly into the undergrowth that had taken hold in this particular corner of the ruins.

Ianto joined Gwen in running his own scanner over the area, fidgeting awkwardly from foot-to-foot as he did so. “Some faint traces of Rift energy around but no trails on the ground,” he noted. He straightened up abruptly and handed his scanner to Gwen. “I really have to pee.”

He dashed off towards the trees. “You should have gone before you left!” Jack called after him with a laugh. He took over where Ianto had left off, scanning the ground and reading the results with a frown.

Gwen looked over towards the trees, where Ianto had now disappeared from sight, brow wrinkled with concern. “He did,” she murmured quietly to herself.

*

The café was full of Saturday afternoon shoppers escaping the rain when PC Andy Davidson walked in. A few looked up at his uniform in alarm but most were engrossed in their own conversations. He spotted DI Robinson at the far end of the café, sitting in a booth with a coffee in front him, wearing a ridiculous sleeveless top despite the freezing weather.

Andy slid into the seat opposite, an act made difficult by all the paraphernalia clipped to his cumbersome vest.

“Thanks for coming,” Arthur greeted him, lounging back against the cushioned bench and grinning.

“Why am I here?” Andy asked suspiciously. He had reasoned that meeting with a Detective Inspector counted as work and was therefore something he could legitimately do whilst on duty, but he was beginning to have his doubts.

“An interesting application landed on my desk this morning,” Arthur informed him.

Andy wasn’t following. “What?”

“You want to join the CID?” Arthur asked.

Andy shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. “Saw the job come up,” he said. “Thought I’d go for it.”

“You’re only a PC,” Arthur reminded him, still with that unsettling grin. “It’s a bit of a long shot.”

“Nothing to lose, have I?” Andy retorted, feeling a little sensitive. “Look, if you just wanted to tell me I haven’t got the job, couldn’t you have done that over the phone?”

“Well, you see, I have a proposition for you,” Arthur told him.

“You do?” Andy asked nervously.

“Yes, you see, I thought perhaps, if I scratched your back, you might feel like scratching mine?” Arthur suggested. “Metaphorically of course, unless that’s your thing…”

Andy leant across the table and spoke quietly, not quite believing was he was hearing. “You want me to sleep with you for the job?”

“What? No!” Arthur grimaced. “Jesus. I’m not that desperate for sex.”

“Oh. Right,” Andy replied, his cheeks burning. “Sorry – what exactly are you saying?”

“I want the inside info on Torchwood,” Arthur explained. “You’re close to the woman – Gwen. If I let you into my team, you can be our liaison, comprender?”

“I see.” Andy scowled and sat back in his seat. Gwen bloody Cooper. It always came down to her.

“Do we have a deal?” Arthur enquired, eyebrow raised expectantly.

Gwen bloody Cooper. One of these days, interesting things would happen to Andy that had nothing whatsoever to do with Gwen bloody Cooper. Still, he reasoned with himself pragmatically, chances to join the CID didn’t drop into your lap every day. He sighed. “Yes.”

“Great.” Arthur proffered a hand across the table. “And the sex can be an additional bonus if you want?”

Andy looked at Arthur’s hand and declined to shake it. “No,” he assured him firmly.

*

Tony held the stone aloft and the group were as mesmerised by it as they had been the day before. Michael found himself transfixed by the shifting colours beneath its surface and its soft, throbbing glow that appeared more intense than it had before.

“It’s not happy,” Tony informed them.

“How do you know?” Logan asked.

“I can sense it,” Tony explained. “It speaks to me.”

“How do we make it happy?” Amira enquired, a hint of fear in her normally detached tone.

“It wants something,” Tony replied

“I sense it too!” Caitlin cried, closing her eyes and beginning her usual shaking routine.

Tony raised the stone high above his head and closed his eyes, focusing. “It wants…it wants…sacrifice,” he declared decisively.


	3. Chapter 3

Though he’d never smoked himself, it was at times like these that Arthur cursed the smoking ban. A half-full basement jazz club late on a damp Sunday evening seemed somehow incomplete without a haze of smoke drifting across the room. It had been several months after moving to Cardiff that he’d finally found this place; the sort of place where a man could sit alone and nurse a glass of expensive whiskey whilst listening the best jazz musicians South Wales had to offer. It had been a year since the ban, but he still missed the smoke.

The quartet taking to the stage tonight were young and Arthur pushed away that recurring discomfort that his own youth was sliding away from him. Had already slid away, if he was being truly honest. He took another sip of Lagavulin. The bass player was hot anyway, and it wouldn’t be the first time Arthur had gone home with one of the band.

As the first bars of ‘Strange Meadow Lark’ rang out, someone dropped into the spare chair at Arthur’s table. “Wish I could play the piano like that.”

Arthur’s irritation faded almost instantly when he clocked the stranger sitting opposite. Bright blue eyes shone from sunken sockets.

“He’s not bad,” Arthur agreed.

“Close your eyes and it could be Brubeck,” the young man nodded. He had too much gel in his short brown hair but he was cute, in an understated way.

“Almost.” Arthur tilted his glass and watched the light move through the amber liquid. He looked up at the man from under his eyelids. “You a Brubeck fan?”

“Yeah,” the guy nodded. “I’m a music student at the Uni. Specialising in jazz piano.”

“Impressive,” Arthur said, tapping his fingernails against his glass and flicking his eyebrows briefly upwards.

“Billy.” He held out a hand across the table.

“Arthur.” He let the handshake linger a second or two longer than was necessary.

They both let a few more phrases of the virtuosic piano fill the weighted silence between them.

“I’ve, uh, seen you in the clubs,” Billy said eventually, lowering his voice despite the fact that no one could have overheard their conversation.

Arthur didn’t need clarification to know which clubs he was talking about. He raised an eyebrow suggestively. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Billy echoed.

Arthur leant back in his chair and grinned. “Can I buy you a drink?”

*

The rain that had been falling on and off all weekend had finally stopped but the ground was wet underfoot and the wind freezing as it whipped through the ruins of the old Abbey. Michael shifted his feet in the mud and shared a nervous glance with Martin. Tony had said this was what they needed to do and Stan had volunteered, but still – this was more than just hypothetical discussions at the community centre. This was real.

The only light was coming from the glowing bag in Tony’s hand and the torch on Amira’s mobile. Stan lay shirtless on the wet stone, his ribs prominent through the paper-thin skin of his torso. His face was blank and his hands clasped unnervingly casually over his midriff.

Tony and Caitlin had found themselves some kind of robes. They looked like something they might have got from the costume department of the local amateur dramatics society but Michael didn’t like to say so.

Tony removed the stone from its undignified carrier bag and passed it to Caitlin, who held it above her head. Michael found his eyes drawn to it, mesmerised once more by the swirling patterns and comforting glow. Tony reached down again and this time produced a dagger. Michael thought it was probably a dagger, anyway. He wasn’t much of an expert on offensive weapons but he thought it probably qualified as a dagger. It looked old, with an ornate handle, but the tip was definitely sharp. The reflection of the stone glinted in the blade.

Tony and Caitlin began chanting in a language Michael didn't recognise. He guessed that the two of them had met again earlier in the day to come up with their costumes and the chant. He wondered why the rest of them hadn't been included. Did Tony doubt his commitment to the cause? The thought stung a little.

Prompted by a nod from Tony, Steven stepped forward and took hold of Stan's arms, though there seemed no need for it. He was compliant to the point of disturbing. Taking a deep, steady breath, Tony approached the stone, raised the dagger two-handed above his head and plunged it downward. It hit Stan's chest with a sickening squelch.

Feeling weak but unable to help himself, Michael winced and squeezed his eyes shut until the screams gurgled to a stop. With a sudden cry, Caitlin dropped the stone and it landed in the sodden ground with a dull thud, the light now so bright they could not longer look at it. Eyes wide, Caitlin turned her burnt palms to the group. All Michael could focus on, with nauseating horror, were the blood spatters across Tony's face, the maniacal expression in his eyes and the object he held triumphantly aloft in his right hand.


	4. Chapter 4

The phone ringing dragged Arthur from a sleep-deprived whiskey-soaked haze. Grey light filtered through the curtains and someone stirred in the bed beside him. Mouth dry and head pounding, he swiped his phone from his bedside table and answered it.

“Uniform just pulled a body out of the Taff sir,” Mandy told him.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Lovely.” Arthur looked over at the young man lying beside him, propped up on one elbow and watching him curiously. “Where?”

“Bute Park,” Mandy replied.

“I’m on my way.” Arthur hung up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. As he stood, he stretched his arms above his head, confident that Billy would be checking him out as he did so. “I’ve got to go to work.”

Billy rolled over and looked at his watch. “Me too.”

“Where do you work?” Arthur asked.

“Tesco,” Billy told him. “On Cowbridge Road.”

Arthur opened his wardrobe and selected an appropriately muted shirt to suit his delicate constitution. “I can drop you off on my way.”

“Thanks.” Billy sat on the edge of the bed and began to swipe his clothes from the floor. Arthur paused, half into his shirt. In the daylight, Billy looked a lot younger than he had done last night but, Arthur admitted with a sigh as he started on his buttons, he was getting to the age where anyone under the age of twenty-five looked like a teenager. He shook his head and reached into the wardrobe for a tie.

*

“Thanks for the lift,” Billy said as he stepped out of the Lexus into the Tesco car park.

“Anytime.” With a wink, Arthur roared off. Billy stuffed his hands in his pockets and watched as the convertible pulled out into the traffic and disappeared. For a first one-night stand, he thought he’d done pretty well. Penthouse apartment and a Lexus. He could quite happily see himself set up as Arthur’s toyboy. That was probably just something that happened on TV, though.

He glanced at his watch and realised that he really did need to get a move on. He half-jogged into the shop and passed Lorna, unloading a trolley of onions.

“Didn’t think you were working today?” she said when she saw him.

“I’m not,” Billy said, head down as he hurried past. “Left something in my locker.”

He punched in the code to let himself into the staff room and went straight to his locker. Retrieving his rucksack and school uniform, he headed into the toilets to change. If he was quick, he’d be in school for first period.

*

Arthur was beginning to feel more himself as he approached the police cordon that had been stretched around a group of trees in the park. He was desperately in need of some coffee but the paracetamol he’d knocked back before leaving home were starting to do the trick. Since when did a few glasses of whiskey have this effect on him? He really was getting old.

Mandy was conversing with a white-suited SOCO but Davidson stood eagerly beside the flapping tape, wearing a suit that hung off him as though his mother had said he’d grow into it.

“It’s a bit weird sir,” Andy greeted him, lifting the tape so Arthur could duck under it.

Arthur’s feet slid in the soft ground and he winced as he looked down at the mud splatters on the toes of his Berluti Oxfords. “Torchwood weird?” he queried.

“Maybe,” Andy agreed excitedly.

Arthur picked his way carefully over to the body, giving Mandy a brief nod in greeting. He squatted down beside the corpse; an emaciated young man with bleach blonde hair.

“Cause of death is pretty obvious,” said the pathologist, pointing to the bare chest.

“Fucking hell,” Arthur remarked, staring at the gaping space in the centre of the man’s torso. His dip in the river had washed most of the blood off but the wound was surrounded by ragged flaps of skin.

“The heart is missing,” the pathologist expanded.

“Any ideas how it was removed?” he enquired.

“It was hacked out,” the pathologist explained bluntly. “It wasn’t a surgeon, that’s for sure.”

Arthur stood up and walked over to Andy. “Call them,” Arthur told him. “See if they know anything about this.”

*

Jack tilted his head to get a better look at the picture that Gwen had projected up onto the screen in the conference room. The corpse had a disturbingly empty space in the left side of its chest. He took the coffee that Ianto handed him and frowned.

“He wants to know if we’ve seen anything like this before,” Gwen explained. Andy Davidson had called her earlier with a possible case and sent the photos over.

“What did you tell him?” Jack asked taking a sip of his coffee.

“That we’d have a think,” Gwen said.

“Hm.” Jack frowned again.

“Should we tell him?” Ianto asked, taking a seat and picking up his own mug. He blew into it and then put it back down again.

“Tell him what?” Gwen asked.

“That we have seen this before,” Ianto reminder her. “Mary.”

“This isn’t the same thing at all.” Jack pointed at the screen. “This was cut out. Badly, but cut nevertheless. Mary was far more…direct.”

“Do you think it’s a Torchwood case?” Gwen asked.

Jack scrunched his face up. It was weird, certainly, but there was nothing to suggest alien involvement. “Not enough evidence to go on at this stage,” he decided.

He was about to suggest they go through the weekend’s Rift alerts when Ianto suddenly pushed back his chair and stood up. “Excuse me.” Before Gwen and Jack could ask him why, he had disappeared from the room.

*

Ianto burst into the toilets and rushed over to the urinals. He gritted his teeth as he peed, breathing through the burning pain. He looked down at the blood trickling away down the drain. “Fuck.” He rested his forehead on the cool tiles for a moment as the blood disappeared from view. “Fuck.” He zipped up, washed his hands and returned to work.


	5. Chapter 5

They were only one chair fewer in the community hall tonight but the group seemed noticeably smaller. Stan hadn’t had the biggest personality but his absence was painfully obvious. Avoiding eye contact with the others, Michael stared down into his tea. The brown liquid looked like the waters of the Taff where they’d slid Stan’s body under cover of darkness the night before. He shuddered and put the cup on the floor by his feet.

Tony gingerly lifted the stone from an old cake tin using a pair of floral oven mitts. In other circumstances, it might have been comical. “It’s still not happy,” he told the group. “It needs another sacrifice.”

Someone cleared their throat to Michael’s left and the whole group turned to stare at Martin. “Do you…do you think this is the right way forward?” he asked tentatively.

“Are you questioning its power?” Tony asked coldy.

“No, I…” Martin swallowed, seeming to hunch in on himself.

“We’re all in this together Martin,” Tony reminded him, voice flat yet threatening. “Don’t forget that.”

No one else spoke. Michael knew Tony was right. Where had their objections been last night?

“We need another volunteer,” Tony said eventually breaking the menacing silence that had fallen over the group.

A chair scraped loudly back. “Take me,” Caitlin declared dramatically, her bandaged hands raised towards the ceiling. “I am ready.”

*

Shutting the front door behind him, Billy dumped his rucksack in the hallway.

“Hello love!” his mum called.

“Hi mum!” he called back, wandering into the kitchen.

His mum was unloading the dishwasher. “Did you have a good weekend with your dad?” she asked.

“Yeah, it was good thanks.” He grabbed a glass from the dishwasher and filled it from the tap. A few years ago, his feuding parents had made him cry and rage but now he’d learnt to turn the fact that they couldn’t stand each other and never spoke to his own advantage.

Walking through to the living room, he set his glass on a coaster on top of the piano and flipped the lid open. He set his hands over the keys and found them sliding to settle on his new favourite chord – C major 9. He ran up and down the keyboard in broken chords and then, with eyes closed, worked his way through his latest composition.

“Is that what your teacher asked you to practice?”

He opened his eyes to find his mum standing in the doorway, a disapproving frown on her face, but he kept playing.

“Just warming up,” he claimed.

“You should be warming up with your scales,” his mum scolded. Crossing to the piano, she picked up the scale book, along with the ABRSM book of Grade 8 pieces, and brandished them in front of his face. “This is what you should be practicing. For your exam.”

“I will,” Billy assured her, finally losing concentration and stopping playing.

“I haven’t heard you playing your exam pieces for weeks.”

He sighed, dramatically. “Because they’re rubbish.”

“It’s Bach and Mozart Billy,” she retorted, sounding almost personally offended. “They’re not rubbish.”

Billy scowled. He was sick of having this conversation. “I hate classical music.”

“Well, unfortunately I am paying for your lessons so that’s what you’ll be playing,” she snapped, opening the books and dumping them emphatically on the stand in front of him.

Thumping the lid down so that the strings inside the piano vibrated discordantly, Billy stood up. “I’m not playing anything,” he declared, and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” His mum followed him into the hallway.

He grabbed his coat and opened the front door. “Out.”

*

Billy used to think Liam was a pretty good kisser. Before last night, that was. Now he seemed all tongue and no finesse. Plus, it was getting dark and Billy’s arse was starting to freeze to the wall they were sitting on. They’d been coming up to the ruined Abbey for six months now. Did that make Liam his boyfriend? Billy wasn’t sure and they’d never talked about it. He broke the kiss and watch their breath puff up into the air between them.

“You know, you could come round my house,” Billy said. “Bit warmer.”

Liam wrinkled his nose. “Don’t want your Mum knowing,” he said.

“She doesn’t care,” Billy told him. “She knows I’m gay. She’s not fussed.”

“Other people might find out.”

Billy laughed. “Seriously? Is it stuffy in that closet?” 

“Fuck off, Billy,” Liam muttered.

Billy shook his head. “No, why don’t you fuck off Liam?” he retorted. “I’m bored of freezing my nuts off for a hand job. I can have real men whenever I want.”

“Yeah?” Liam glared at him and stood up. “Fine. Have them then. Fuck you.” 

Billy watched Liam walk off into the darkness. He didn’t feel compelled to follow him. He supposed that answered his question about whether or not he considered Liam to be his boyfriend.

He sat for a moment on the wall, lost in his thoughts, before he was stirred from his reverie by voices behind him. He pulled himself up onto the wall he’d been sitting on and peered through the empty window behind him. His eyes went wide as he saw what was happening, until eventually he could watch no longer, turning away in disgust with the screams ringing in his ears.


	6. Chapter 6

The road running alongside Llandaff Abbey was already crawling with police cars when Torchwood arrived on the scene. There was nowhere to park so Jack left the SUV in the middle of the road with its hazard warning lights flashing. The lights from the police cars cast strange shadows over the old ruins and several of the locals were peering from doorways or around curtains to see what was going on.

It wasn’t raining but it was one of those nights when you felt it might at any moment. Gwen began to wish she’d brought a warmer coat as she stepped out of the car into the bitterly cold evening and followed Jack and Ianto towards to the police cordon.

As she ducked under the tape, she did a double take at the man talking to the uniformed sergeant standing guard just inside the cordon.

“Andy?” She put her hands on her hips and gave a quizzical laugh. “Forget your uniform again?” she teased.

“Ha. Ha,” Andy replied with a disgruntled frown. “I’ve been promoted actually.” He puffed out his chest comically. “You are looking at Detective Constable Davidson.”

“Wow.” Gwen had to admit she was more than surprised. Andy was a great guy and a solid copper, but she’d never really seen him as CID material. “Congratulations,” she managed to blurt out eventually.

Andy didn’t look convinced by her sincerity but brushed past it. “So, you think this is a Torchwood thing then?”

“Could be.” Gwen gave a noncommittal shrug, before making her way over to join Jack at the centre of the crime scene.

White-suited SOCOs were hard at work under the floodlights, methodically photographing and sample-taking. Another familiar figure stood by the side of the bloodstained stone, hands in the pockets of his exquisitely well-tailored overcoat.

“Captain,” Arthur Robinson greeted Jack.

“DI Robinson.” Jack was already squaring up. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

“Are you asking me on a date?” Arthur enquired. “Because you’re not my type. Speaking of which – you don’t have the lovely Mr Jones with you tonight?”

“He’s always with me,” Jack assured him, gesturing behind him as Ianto approached. “So - what happened here?”

“We have a witness who reports some sort of ceremonial sacrifice,” Arthur informed them. “But whoever did it scarpered with the body before we got here.”

Ianto was busy surreptitiously scanning the stone as they spoke. He finished, consulted his screen and gave Jack a subtle nod.

Jack clapped Arthur heavily on the arm. “Thanks for your time,” he said. “We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.”

“That’s it?” Arthur called after them as they walked back towards the SUV. “That’s all I get?”

“That’s all you get,” Jack agreed, without turning around.

“Whole place was dripping in Rift energy,” Ianto confirmed as they crossed back under the tape and back to the car. A white van was honking its horn at the blockage in the road. Jack studiously ignored it.

“Next step?” Gwen asked.

“We wait for another body,” Jack decided. “We’ll keep in touch with the police in case any more leads turn up.” They climbed into the car. “It’s late,” Jack said, checking the clock on the dashboard as he pulled away to yet more honking from the white van. “I can drop you off at yours Gwen.” He glanced across at Ianto in the passenger seat. “You want to go back to yours or…”

“Yeah,” Ianto told him, looking away out of the window as the ruins of the Abbey slid past in the darkness. “I’m knackered. Need some sleep.”

“Right.” Jack frowned, taking another few sideways glances at Ianto, before concentrating on the road ahead. “Yeah. Ok.”

*

When his front door buzzer sounded, jolting him into alertness, Ianto considered ignoring it. However, it was most likely to be Jack and, if he’d seen the light on, he would just let himself in with his key if Ianto didn’t answer. He dragged himself off the sofa and away from some shitty late-night detective drama, hit the door-release on the intercom without speaking and opened the door to peer down the stairway. The sarcastic comment he’d been mentally preparing faded to open-mouthed surprise when he saw who was making their way up to his flat.

“Gwen?” he greeted her. “What are you doing here?”

She came to a stop outside his door, a four-pack of lager dangling from her right hand. “You’ve been peeing every five minutes, you’ve barely drunk any coffee and we’ve had three quiet nights in a row, and God knows that’s rare enough, but you haven’t spent any of them with Jack.” She tilted her head interrogatively. “What’s going on?”

Ianto gaped for a few seconds and briefly considered fobbing her off. Then he realised the foolishness of the endeavour. This was Gwen Cooper standing on his doorstep, after all. With a sigh, he relented. “You’d better come in.”


	7. Chapter 7

Sometimes, it’s the moments before the life-changing moments that you remember most clearly. For Arthur, it was the minutes he spent walking down the police station corridor, as he had done every morning for the past two-and-a-half years, drinking what must have been getting on for his 2000th cup of takeaway coffee since moving to Cardiff, and talking to Mandy about the day ahead. Police work was never the same every day but he was looking forward to a fairly standard one: a bit of tedious paperwork, emails, phone calls, inspect the odd crime scene or dead body, interviews, flirting, lunch on the run and home in time to spruce up for a night out. It was a perfectly mundane moment but one that would be ingrained in his memory forever.

The moment right before he saw Billy Watkins being escorted towards the interview rooms by a uniformed officer.

Arthur paused to take a sip of coffee. Too hot. He winced. “What’s he doing here?” he asked Mandy, gesturing towards Billy with his cup.

“Oh, he’s the witness,” Mandy informed him. “The one who saw the murder last night.”

Arthur groaned, rolling his scalded tongue around behind his teeth. “Then we have a problem,” he sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “I slept with him at the weekend. I slept with a bloody witness.”

Mandy had gone strangely quiet. Arthur looked over at her and found her staring at him in horror. “You’ve got bigger problems than that, sir,” she told him. “He’s only fifteen.”

“What?” Arthur asked. And that was it. That was the moment. The moment after the moment of blissful ignorance that he would never forget. There was a dull buzzing in his ears.

“That boy is fifteen years old,” Mandy reiterated.

The buzzing grew louder. His chest tightened. “Oh shit.” What else was there to say?

“Look Arthur…” Mandy began awkwardly.

He held up a hand. “Don’t.”

“You know I’ll have to say something,” she said, lowering her voice as a pair of PCs passed by.

Arthur waited until they were out of earshot. “No. You won’t.” He shook his head. “I’ll admit everything. You don’t need to be involved.”

They stood together in silence in the middle of the bustling corridor. Arthur watched from a distance as Billy was ushered into the interview room, accompanied by a woman he could only assume was the boy’s mother. His chest constricted even further as he contemplated the sinking realisation that his police career was over.

*

The surgery waiting room was busy but uncomfortably quiet. Most people sat alone but those who were in pairs conducted minimal conversation in hushed tones. Phones rang and doors opened down distant corridors but they were only brief interludes in the pervading silence.

Beside Ianto, Gwen was flicking through a magazine, though Ianto suspected she had little interest in interior design. He couldn’t even pretend to concentrate on a magazine and instead stared at the beige patterned carpet between his feet.

Gwen paused in her flicking. “You know, we’ve probably got something at the Hub that could check you out,” she suggested, subscribing to the unspoken agreement to keep all conversation in whispers.

“I’d prefer to see an actual doctor, anonymously,” Ianto murmured back. “Remind me again why you’re here?”

“Because someone had to make you come and think about it – better me than Jack,” Gwen reasoned.

“True,” Ianto conceded, glancing up at the clock for the fifteenth time since they’d come in.

There was another silence. Gwen threw down her magazine and picked up another. She flipped it open and then dropped it into her lap with a sigh. “Why did you wait four days?” she asked.

“I was burying my head in the sand,” Ianto muttered.

“You’ll probably be fine,” Gwen reassured him. “I mean, wouldn’t Jack have noticed if…”

“Stop,” Ianto pleaded. “Please. Just stop.”

Before Gwen could ask any further uncomfortable, probing questions, the PA system crackled into life and called Ianto’s name. He took a deep breath and stood up.

“Do you want me to go in with you?” Gwen offered brightly.

“Really, really no,” Ianto assured her.

“Ok – I’ll be out here if you need me.” She gave him an encouraging thumbs up and went back to her magazine.

Ianto rolled his eyes and headed off up the corridor. He found the door to his GP’s room, knocked and entered. He’d never met Dr Richards before and wasn’t sure what to expect. He found him to be a balding man, nearing retirement, in a blazer with worn elbows and glasses balanced on the end of his bulbous nose. He perched at the edge of his chair so that his stomach bulged forward over the waistband of his trousers.

“Have a seat Mr Jones,” he offered, gesturing to a chair.

Ianto settled himself nervously on the chair, leg bouncing anxiously up and down.

“What seems to be the problem?” the GP asked.

Ianto cleared his throat. No beating round the bush. “I, uh, I’m experiencing a lot of pain when I pee,” he explained. “And there’s blood in it.”

“I see,” Dr Richards responded, without looking up from the notes he was scrawling. “Anything else?”

No going back now, Ianto reasoned. “I, uh, I can’t, um, get an erection,” he added.

“Anything else?”

“Nope.” The p popped out of Ianto’s mouth as he tucked his hands awkwardly between his thighs, lips pressed tightly together.

“And how long has this been going on for?” Dr Richards asked, still without any sort of reaction.

“Four days,” Ianto reported.

“Are you sexually active Mr Jones?”

That was one way of putting it. “Yes.”

“Do you have a long-term partner?”

Ianto opened his mouth to answer and then closed it again. His GP didn’t need an in-depth rundown on the complicated mess that was his relationship with Jack. “Yes,” he replied again.

“Has your partner had any health problems lately?”

There was a slight ringing in Ianto’s ears. “No, no,” he said. “He’s in perfect health.”

“He?” The first hint of reaction in the GP’s tone.

“Yes.”

Dr Richards’ face returned to its inscrutable mask as he noted it all down dispassionately. Ianto knew Dr Richards was seeing a gay man sitting opposite him now but he couldn’t see the point in correcting him. Maybe Jack did have a point about labels and categories after all.

“Do you engage in anal sex?” Dr Richards continued his quest to rundown Ianto’s top ten topics to avoid talking to strangers about.

Ianto’s cheeks were burning. “Yes.”

“Do you use condoms?”

“Yes, usually.” Even inside his own head, Ianto could detect the noticeable elevation in pitch in his replies.

Dr Richards lowered his glasses down the bridge of his nose and peered at Ianto over the top of them. He reminded Ianto of his GCSE History teacher and the time Ianto was called into his office to discuss sloppy coursework and bunking off lessons. _He’s a professional_ , Ianto reminded himself. _He’s not here to judge._

“Right then.” Dr Richards took off his glasses and tucked them into his breast pocket. “I think you’d better pop your trousers off and get up on the couch Mr Jones.”

As he stood and began to work on his belt buckle, Ianto tried to force his mind into its happy whilst Dr Richards snapped on a pair of latex gloves.

*

Gwen almost missed Ianto as he came striding out across the waiting room. She threw her magazine back onto the table and jumped up to join him. The automatic doors swung open as they passed through them, bringing through a gust of cold wind and a scattering of fallen leaves.

“So?” she prompted.

“It doesn’t feel ‘quite right’ up there apparently,” Ianto told her, without breaking his stride. “He’s referring me to a urologist at the hospital.”

“When?” Gwen asked, trotting beside him down the slope to the car park.

“In the next few days.”

They reached Gwen’s car and she pulled the keys from her pocket. The locks sprung open with a clunk.

Ianto paused with one hand over the top of the passenger door. “Can you – not mention this to Jack?” he asked quietly.

Gwen frowned at him over the top of the car. “Ok,” she agreed. “If that’s what you want.”

“Thanks.”

They got into the car and pulled the doors closed. As Gwen started the engine, she glanced across at Ianto who was staring out of the window, hands clasped in his lap. She couldn’t really understand why he wouldn’t want to tell Jack. If their roles were reversed, she’d want Rhys to know, so he could reassure her and tell her everything would be ok. She felt sure Jack would be capable of providing the same level of comfort if he was given the chance. Maybe Ianto's reluctance said more about him than it did about Jack. She supposed it wasn't really her place to say.


	8. Chapter 8

Rain hammered on the pavements and battered against the window of Costa Coffee as Gwen squelched down the high street and ducked into the café. Instantly, steam seemed to start evaporating from her wet jacket as she squeezed past the crowds, almost tripping on the wheels of an enormous double-buggy, eventually finding Andy on a tiny table near the back. He was hunched over his coffee cup, still in the ill-fitting suit, and Gwen had to stifle her laugh as she sat down.

“So, your new boss sent you?” she greeted him, rubbing her freezing, wet hands together - skin dry and chapped in the cold weather - and squeezing herself into the chair opposite; an act made difficult by the fact that too many tables had been crammed into too small a space and the man at the table behind had his chair shoved back so he could lounge expansively in his seat.

“Yes.” Andy frowned at her over the rim of his cup. “Is that a problem?”

“No,” Gwen assured him, fighting to keep the amusement out of her voice. She gestured across the table at him. “Just…getting used to Detective Andy.”

Andy put down his mug, his frown deepening. “You thought I was going to stay a PC forever?”

“No.” Gwen collected herself, realising she was being patronising. She reached over and patted his arm. “Of course not. I’m sorry.” She rested her elbows on the table and smiled. “What did you want to know?”

Andy mirrored her pose, all business now, lowering his voice, despite the raucous background conversation. “You were scanning for something the other night,” he said. “What did you find?”

“Nothing,” Gwen replied without pausing for thought.

Andy shook his head. “You’re lying.”

Gwen elected not to reply. “Have you got any leads from your witness?” she asked instead.

“No.” Andy wagged a finger at her. “You don’t get anything from me until I get something from you. Is this aliens?”

Gwen glanced around. No one was paying them any attention. “It could be,” she opted for. Vague enough. “We don’t really know at this stage. Ok?”

Andy’s jabbing finger prodded at the table now. “Are you really going to try and bullshit me after everything?” he hissed.

“I’m not bullshitting you Andy!” Gwen assured him. “We really don’t know anything.”

“Fine.” He rested his cheek on his fist and began to spin his mug on its saucer with his free hand.

“What do you know?” Gwen asked again.

Andy sighed. “We know there were five or possibly six of them,” he told her. “That’s pretty much all the kid who saw it could tell us. Forensics tested the blood on the stone and matched some of it with the body that we pulled out of the river the other day. That body was a guy called Stanley Ford – a well-known local drug addict. We’re waiting on DNA tests for the other blood.”

“Brilliant. Thanks Andy.” Gwen gave him another pat on the arm before sliding herself awkwardly out of her chair.

Andy looked up at her, irritated but resigned. “And you’ll tell me if you find anything?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Gwen lied. “I promise.”

She left Andy despondently contemplating his coffee and made her way back out into the rain.

*

Sitting in Chief Superintendent Kathy Swanson’s office whilst she stood behind her desk and glared down at him, Arthur felt like a schoolboy awaiting a chastisement from his head teacher. Which was strange because that had never happened to him before. From the very beginning - 4-years-old, called to the headmaster’s office in his first week at prep school for answering back to his house master, sitting in the chair with his cap askew and a grin on his face, daring the headmaster to punish _him_ , Arthur Gerald Robinson III - Arthur had never felt small. In all the offices he’d been called to throughout his life, to answer for misdemeanours both real and imagined, he had always been confident that he would walk away untouched. Not today.

“You do understand how serious this is, don’t you?” Swanson asked, pacing the metre of carpet behind her desk with furious intent.

“Of course I do,” Arthur snapped.

“I’ll have to suspend you immediately,” she continued. “You’ll be arrested. There will be a criminal trial.”

“I do have some knowledge of the law,” Arthur reminded her sarcastically.

“Still so fucking smug.” Swanson shook her head with disgust. “You’re a paedophile Robinson. You do realise that, don’t you?”

Arthur shrunk a little in his seat. Another new sensation. “Yes,” he admitted.

“I have to say, I’m really not surprised.” Swanson stop pacing and gazed out of the window, hands clasped behind her back in classic copper pose. “Men like you…”

“Gay men, you mean?” Arthur bristled. “Are you suggesting that all gay men are paedophiles?”

Swanson turned to face him with a steely expression. “I was referring to overprivileged rich white men, actually.”

“Nice save,” Arthur bit back.

“Really?” Swanson retorted, her tone eerily calm but frosty. “You know you could parade a string of rent boys through the station and still have an easier time getting ahead than I did. One might almost call this karma.”

With a sigh, Arthur pushed back his chair and stood up. “You’ll have my resignation letter within the hour.”

“Not a chance,” Swanson told him. “You don’t get to resign. I’m firing you.”

Arthur gave a bitter laugh. “Thanks for your support.”

He found Mandy waiting for him outside, making a good pretence of studying a notice about car shares on the opposite wall.

“What did she say?” she asked when she heard the office door close.

“Guess what?” Arthur said sarcastically. “I’m fired.”

“That was inevitable,” Mandy noted as they began to walk off down the corridor towards their own offices.

“I’m going to be arrested,” Arthur told her. “Sex with a minor. I’m paedophile.”

“What were you thinking?” Mandy asked.

“He didn’t look that young!” Arthur protested. “He said he was a university student. What sort of fifteen-year-old wants to come back and listen to your Thelonius Monk records?”

“You want me to feel sorry for you?” Mandy stopped dead and turned to him without a hint of her usual indulgence in her features. She folded her arms and regarded him steadily.

Arthur deflated. “No.”

“With your attitude to sex, it was only a matter of time Arthur,” she said, turning away from him and continuing up the corridor.

Arthur caught up with her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

“You keep going for younger and younger men,” Mandy expanded. “It was bound to happen eventually.” They had reached the CID and Mandy turned with a shrug. “You got your comeuppance.” She sat down at her desk and began shuffling through some memos.

Arthur watched her for a moment, knowing she was right. He turned to his own office and looked at his name on the thin door to his isolated cubicle office. He reached up and slid the name plate out of its holder.

*

Gwen had come to the conclusion that all secondary comprehensives in Britain had been designed the same way. Llandaff High School was larger than her own back in Swansea but it had the same maze of soulless, grey cuboid buildings with smeary single-paned windows, narrow corridors with squeaky linoleum and incomprehensible signage. It was mid-morning so the corridors and courtyards were empty and eerily quiet as she and Jack waited in reception. The school receptionist kept peeking at them suspiciously through the sliding glass window and then ducking her head away out of sight again.

They were sitting on ratty chairs that had seen better days and Gwen felt strangely uncomfortable. She’d never hated school, but she’d never really liked it either, and the familiar smells and sights sat uneasily in her stomach. Jack was lounging back in his seat, hands clasped in his lap, gazing around at the reception with a sort of childlike wonder. She wondered what sort of a school Jack Harkness might have gone to. And how long ago it would have been.

Eventually, a boy entered the reception area. Beneath his blazer, his shirt was hanging out and the knot on his tie was loose and settled several buttons below his open collar. Just the way Gwen and her friends used to wear their ties in early 90s. Ianto would have something to say, she was sure. She wondered if his tie was ever out of place when he was at school. Billy Watkins sauntered over to them, hands in pockets. He was tall and broad-shouldered for fifteen, with mousy brown hair styled into casual tufts and piercing blue eyes.

Gwen stood up. “Hi Billy,” she greeted him.

“Hi.” Billy stopped in front of her. “Are you police?”

“Sort of,” Gwen explained, sitting down again. “We’re a special branch who deal with the sort of thing you saw the other night.” She gestured to another chair and Billy sat down.

“Tell us what you saw,” Jack instructed, leaning forward on his elbows.

Billy wrinkled his nose as he thought about it. “There were five or six of them standing around,” he recalled. He chewed on a nail and Gwen noticed that all his nails were badly bitten. “One of them was lying over this stone, like it was a table,” he continued. “A couple of them were wearing these, like, robe things. And one of them was holding this light thing in their hands. Holding it up and chanting stuff. It was like a horror movie or something.”

“And what happened next?” Jack prompted.

“One of the ones in robes had, like, a knife.” Billy frowned and rubbed the back of his neck. “I think. I couldn’t see it very well. But they started stabbing the one on the stone and she started screaming and I looked away ‘cause…” He grimaced. “You know.”

“Yeah,” Gwen agreed with a sympathetic smile. “She?”

Billy shrugged. “Sounded like a woman,” he said. “And, she, um, had no top on so I could see, you know…” He smirked a little and mimed breasts.

“What were you doing at the Abbey Billy?” Jack asked.

Billy’s smirk broadened. “Going for a walk.”

“You go for a lot of walks round the Abbey after dark?” Jack pushed.

Billy jerked a mischievous eyebrow and gave a nonchalant shrug. “Now and again.”

Jack raised his own eyebrow in disbelief. “By yourself?”

“All by myself,” Billy enunciated carefully, grinning now.

Jack stood up, acknowledging defeat. “Thanks for your time, Billy.”

“No worries.”

Gwen stood up too. “Don’t forget – you can always call if you think of anything else.” She handed him a card.

Billy turned it over in his hands, reading it thoughfully. He looked up at her. “I thought you were going to ask me about that bloke,” he said. “The detective.”

“What bloke?” Gwen asked.

“The one I slept with,” Billy explained. “He’s been arrested apparently.”

Jack looked at Gwen but she just shrugged blankly.

“Different departments,” Jack told the boy, before pushing his way through the reception doors. Gwen gave Billy one last sympathetic smile before following him out.

*

They found Ianto at his computer when they got back to the Hub.

“Anything new?” he asked, without looking round.

“Not much,” Jack admitted, coming over to join him. “Anything on Stanley Ford?”

“I think I might have a lead,” Ianto told them. “He was part of a group called ‘Arrival.’ They believe that Jesus’ second coming is imminent and that he’ll be arriving in a spaceship.” Ianto spun his monitor and pointed to the screen. “They have a Facebook group.”

Gwen joined Jack and they peered over Ianto’s shoulder to read the screen.

“Nice work.” Jack patted Ianto on the shoulder. “Can you follow up on some of the other group members?”

“Yep.” Ianto hopped down from his seat. “I’ll do that when I get back.”

Jack frowned. “Back from where?”

“I have to go somewhere,” Ianto answered vaguely. He was avoiding eye contact, which was never a good sign.

“Where?” Jack pushed.

Ianto pulled on his coat. “It’s something personal.”

Jack knew people thought he was pretty clueless and self-involved but he was, in fact, a people person. You didn’t get to be a successful conman without being able to read people well. And Ianto wasn’t even that difficult to read. He was hiding something from Jack and, from past experience, when Ianto hid things, it wasn’t likely to be a surprise birthday party. Unfortunately, Jack also knew that, when it came to Ianto, his own insecurities would always prevent him from probing too deep.

“I think you’re forgetting that I’m your boss,” Jack reminded him tetchily, mentally berating himself even as pulled the boss card. “You kinda need to give me a reason for leaving work in the middle of the day.”

Ianto finally met his gaze. “You’re always swanning off and not telling us where you’re going,” he countered, his tone measured and not betraying the anger flashing behind his eyes.

Jack shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted up his chin. “Boss’ prerogative,” he shot back.

“So fire me.” Ianto disappeared without another word, leaving Jack to glare irritably at the door as it rolled shut behind him.

He turned to Gwen. “What the hell was that?”

Now Gwen had a shifty look on her face too. What the hell was going on?

“Maybe Ianto needs to keep some things to himself,” she said eventually, hurrying over to her own workstation to avoid Jack’s suspicious scrutiny.

Jack sighed, following her. “He’s been really weird lately,” he complained. “And I haven’t had sex in a week.”

“Jack!” Gwen exclaimed, spinning round in her chair to face him. “One.” She held up a finger. “TMI. Two – don’t be so insensitive. Have you tried talking to him?”

Now it was Jack’s turn to avoid eye contact. “No,” he admitted.

*

Sandy Bevin shut the oven door with a clang and turned her head suspiciously. There was whispering in the hallway. She stuck her head out of the kitchen and found Michael zipping Luke into his coat. As he reached for the latch, she leapt out on front of him without thinking, throwing herself against the front door.

“What the hell?” Michael queried, stepping back and pulling Luke against him.

Sandy waved the spatula that was still in her hand at him. “You are not taking Luke with you,” she told him firmly.

“He’s my son too,” Michael retorted. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

He reached for the door latch again but Sandy remained resolutely blocking him. “You were screaming in your sleep last night again.” Her tone softened and she reached out to her husband desperately. She barely recognised him anymore. “I don’t want you to go.”

Something slipped in Michael’s expression and for a moment, she glimpsed the man behind. It was as though there was someone trapped inside, trying to get a message through to her. “I have to go,” he said, his tone more sad than determined. Luke tilted his head up, round eyes staring between his parents in confusion.

“Or what?” Sandy probed, trying to keep her voice gentle.

Michael took a breath. “Tony says…” he began.

“I don’t want to hear about bloody Tony!” Sandy screamed, knowing that she’d lost control. She saw Luke flinch but she couldn’t stop now. “How much money have you given to that guy, Michael?!” He’d been hiding the bank statements, she knew. They used to do that sort of thing together. Everything shared - that’s what they’d said when they were first married and she found out she was pregnant with Lizzie. Now she was glad she’d kept that savings account in her own name.

“It’s for advertising and pamphlet publishing.” Michael repeated it like some mantra, his voice sullen and defensive.

“He’s a scam artist Michael,” Sandy snapped. “A fraudster. He’s using you.”

That seemed to be the catalyst for Michael to regain his resolve. “He’s not,” he assured her firmly. “He believes. Like me. You’ll see.” Grasping Sandy’s shoulder, he threw her out of the way and stormed out, dragging Luke by the hand behind him.


	9. Chapter 9

Arthur had no music playing tonight. He told himself it was because he trying to stay undercover but, in truth, even the thought of listening to jazz was leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. He rolled his Lexus up to the curb and cut the engine, peering out into the darkness of the ruined Abbey.

He would freely admit that his cynicism and lack of respect for authority had made him a terrible soldier but, whatever strings his father had pulled to get him the job, he had been a damn good detective. He would solve this case even if they had fired him. The alternative was sitting in whiskey-soaked depression in his silent flat with the case niggling in the back of his mind until it drove him mad.

Quietly, he stepped out of the car and closed the door softly behind him. He crept up the damp grassy bank and crouched behind one of the walls, rough stone biting into his palms as he cautiously raised his head to scope out the rest of the ruins.

He could see the stone from here. The police tape flapped in the cold wind but his order to keep the site under constant surveillance had obviously been overridden by whatever flatfoot had been parachuted into his position. His job should have gone to Mandy but she wouldn’t want it. She would never have recalled the patrol.

Lights were approaching from the far side of the Abbey. Arthur watched as they gathered around the stone. He squinted, trying to make out what was happening in the gloom. There were a couple of figures in robes and…was that a child?

Arthur watched in shock as the child was manhandled onto the stone. One of the robed figures lifted a glowing orb above their head and in its blazing light, Arthur saw another figure raise a knife.

“Stop!” he yelled, springing from his position behind the wall. “Stop! Police!”

By the time he reached the stone, the figures had scattered, vanishing into the shadows. But the child was still lying over the stone, eyes glassy and bleeding heavily from the stab wound in his chest.

“Shit.” Arthur gathered the boy into his arms and sprinted for his car.

*

The SUV screeched to a halt alongside the Abbey. The team leapt out and made a dash for the stone but found it deserted. Ianto consulted the scanner in his hand, reading the details of the burst of Rift energy that had led them here. Gwen turned, scanning the shadows amongst the trees with her gun drawn. Jack shone his torch over the stone. The fresh blood glistened in its beam.

*

Arthur stood at the door and watched as a nurse checked the myriad of machines the boy was hooked up to. Stable but critical, that’s what they’d told him. There had been an operation and now it was a waiting game. The kid looked tiny in the hospital bed, with the network of tubes and wires trailing off him.

Arthur turned away and took out his phone.

“I’m not supposed to be talking to you,” Andy said when he picked up.

“I know,” Arthur agreed. “But I need you to do something for me.”

“I could get fired.”

“This isn’t to help me,” Arthur told him. “It’s to help the case.”

There was a long pause and then a sigh down the line. “Fine,” Andy relented.

“I was up at the ruined Abbey earlier,” Arthur explained. “They were about to sacrifice a kid. They all ran but I saved the kid. I’m at the hospital with him now. I need you to put out a missing persons report for him. Someone must be missing a kid.” He turned to regard the boy again. “He’s about five, six years old. White. Mousy brown hair. Blue-grey eyes. Not much else in the way of distinguishing features that I can tell.”

There was another silence and Arthur could hear a pen scratching on the other end of the phone. “Ok, got it,” Andy assured him. “But don’t call me again.”

The line clicked dead.

Arthur slid his phone into his pocket and made his way down the corridor to the coffee machine. His coins dropped into the slot and the machine hummed out a pathetically small plastic cup of coffee, both sounds unnervingly loud in the silent, night-time corridor. He looked up as the nurse left the boy’s room, her footsteps squeaking away into the distance. He took himself and his overly-foamy latte back to the room, pulling up a chair beside the bed and settling in for the night.

*

Ianto gazed forlornly down at his bare feet, swinging off the floor as he sat on the edge of the hospital bed. He felt both cold and ridiculously sweaty in the thin hospital gown. The urologist peeled off his glove and lobbed them into a nearby bin.

“Well, it feels a little spongy up there,” he said, consulting a chart on a clipboard with a slight frown. “Looks like the PSA blood test your GP took has come back normal for a guy of your age.” He discarded the chart and handed Ianto a small plastic pot. “Fill that for me and then we’ll send some dye through your urinary tract to see if you’ve got any infections.”

Ianto took the pot and sighed despondently.

*

“Ianto!”

In his heightened sensitivity, Ianto nearly leapt clean off the ground when he heard his name being called down the hospital corridor. He turned to find none other than Arthur Robinson walking towards him.

“You weren’t answering you phone,” Arthur announced when he reached Ianto.

“No. Well.” Ianto shrugged and gestured around him. “Mobiles and hospitals don’t mix.”

“I called your office,” Arthur continued. He cocked an eyebrow, hands on hips. “Captain Fantastic’s on his way.”

“You probably don’t want to call him that,” Ianto told him flatly. “He likes it when people call him that.”

“People?” Arthur queried, grinning. “Or you?”

Ianto decided to ignore that. “What are you doing here?” he asked. Although he didn’t really understand Arthur’s dress sense, Ianto felt that the dishevelled, blood-stained look was probably not deliberate.

“I interrupted another attempted sacrifice last night,” Arthur explained. “A kid this time. I brought him here for treatment.”

“Where is he now?”

“Still in intensive care.” Arthur pointed over his shoulder. “This way.” Ianto followed him back up the corridor. “What were you doing here?”

“I had an appointment,” Ianto muttered quickly. “Nothing serious.”

“Right.” Arthur stopped at a door. “He’s in here.”

Ianto was about to follow Arthur into the room when he spotted Jack and Gwen emerging from the lift a few metres away. They stopped when they saw Ianto and Arthur.

Jack blinked in surprise and then narrowed his eyes at Ianto. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

Ianto shifted uncomfortably. “Oh, uh, Arthur called me,” he stammered.

Jack scowled. “Oh, of course, Arthur called you,” he shot back bitterly.

Ianto didn’t have the energy to respond and simply turned to follow Gwen into the child’s room.

Jack was about to join them, when he found Arthur’s hand on his arm. He looked down at it irritably.

“I didn’t call Ianto,” Arthur told him.

“What?” Jack asked, confused.

“I didn’t call Ianto,” Arthur repeated. “He was already at the hospital for an appointment.”

Jack felt a sudden panic shoot to his extremities. “What for?”

Arthur snorted. “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Why would he tell me? Why don’t you stop being a jealous idiot and ask your boyfriend how he is?”

Without waiting for a response from Jack, Arthur sauntered off down the corridor. Jack peered into the room, watching as Ianto consulted the boy’s chart and Gwen sat in the chair beside the bed with an angry but determined expression on her face. Forcing down his worries, he entered the room to join them.

*

When Arthur returned to the boy’s hospital room, with a disappointing sandwich from the WHSmith downstairs, Torchwood had disappeared. They'd been replaced instead by a woman in a grey waterproof, sitting in the chair beside the boy’s bed. Her eyes went wide when she looked up and caught Arthur watching her. Without a word, she sprang out of the chair, barged past him and ran off down the corridor.

“Hey! Wait!”

Arthur abandoned his lunch and took off after her but when he burst through the double doors, she had disappeared. He dashed into the stairwell, peering up and down, but there was no sign of her.


	10. Chapter 10

Jack stepped out of the lift and found Ianto retrieving a coffee from the machine in the hospital corridor. He watched quietly as Ianto took a sip, pulled a face and shook his head to himself, regarding the contents of the plastic cup with disgust. Swallowing his nerves, Jack approached, stopping a pace away.

“Hey.”

Ianto glanced up at him. “Hey.”

Stuffing his hands into his coat pockets and wishing he had something to hide behind, Jack took a deep breath. “Are you…are you ok?” he asked quietly.

Not even the tiniest flicker of emotion passed over Ianto’s face. “Yeah, fine,” he replied, without missing a beat. And then he grimaced. “Although I could do with some decent coffee.”

“Right.” Jack frowned but Ianto gave him one of his brightest smiles, raised his cup with a resigned shrug, and headed back towards the boy’s room. Sighing, Jack followed him.

*

As the evening closed in around him, Arthur leant forward over his steering wheel and peered into the ruins. The tall trees surrounding the Abbey swayed in a strong winter wind. The weather forecast had said a storm was on its way. Someone keen had put up their Christmas lights already and they flashed on and off in the corner of Arthur’s vision.

He jumped to high alert as his car door opened. Billy clambered into the passenger seat, in his school uniform. Arthur glanced at the striped tie and blazer and felt the nausea rising. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Arthur asked.

“This is my street,” Billy told him. “It’s where I live.” He pointed to a house with a green front door and a patch of pampas grass in the tiny front garden. “That’s my house.”

Arthur had nothing to say that. Of course Billy would just happen to live opposite the scene of the murder he was no longer supposed to be investigating. He stared straight ahead, wondering how long it would be before his father heard what had happened and sent the London lawyers to protect the family name. He wished he had the moral fibre to send them packing.

“I’m sorry about you getting arrested.” Billy finally broke the awkward silence.

Arthur glanced across at him. “Why did you tell me you were a student?” he asked.

Billy gave a small laugh. “Because you wouldn’t have had sex with me if I’d said I was fifteen?” he responded, as though it was obvious. Which, Arthur had to concede, it was. He’d been fifteen once, too.

“What were you even doing in that bar?”

“I was there for the band,” Billy revealed, with a shrug. “I really do play the piano and I love jazz. Just a coincidence that you were there. Really.”

“Aren’t I lucky?” Arthur mused bitterly, turning to look back out of the window.

Just in time to see a familiar woman in a grey waterproof hurrying along the pavement.

He shot bolt upright in his seat. “Oh my God!”

He craned his neck to watch her and then switched to the rear-view mirror, following her as she crossed the street. Billy twisted in his seat to find out what had got Arthur so excited.

“That’s Mrs Bevin,” he said, confused. “She lives a few doors down from me.”

“What number?”

“Seventeen.”

“Thanks for the help,” Arthur told him, already half on the pavement. “Now please get the hell out of my car and don’t come near me again.”

*

Mrs Bevin had the door on the chain when she opened it, pushing a pale, tear-streaked face into the narrow gap.

“DI Arthur Robinson,” Arthur announced. “Can I come in?”

“I need to see some ID,” Mrs Bevin told him, her voice cracked and hoarse.

“I just need to ask you a few questions.” Arthur brushed past her demand. He’d tossed his ID onto Kathy Swanson’s desk two days ago and it had probably been shredded by now. Or filed in some basement archive. Whatever they did with the ID badges of disgraced police officers.

“Not without ID,” Mrs Bevin insisted.

“You were at the hospital.” Arthur tried a different approach. “Visiting a young boy. Why? Who is he?”

“He’s…a friend of my son’s,” Mrs Bevin stammered.

“Yeah? What’s his name?”

She started to answer but her words were overtaken by tears. “Luke,” she sobbed. “His name is Luke.”

“Luke what?”

“Luke Bevin,” she admitted. She took a deep breath, pulling her face back from the door to wipe a sleeve across her eyes. “He’s my son.” Her voice came out as a thin squeak.

“Do you know what happened to him Mrs Bevin?” Arthur pushed.

She shook her head, too vehemently to be the truth. “No. I don’t know anything.”

“How did you know he was in the hospital Mrs Bevin?” Arthur could sense she was about to break – he’d got his fingers into the crack and just needed to find the right question to pry her open.

She hesitated and he saw the shutters come down. “You still haven’t shown me any ID,” she said stonily. “How do I know you’re a real police officer?”

And the door slammed shut.

“I can help you Mrs Bevin!” Arthur hammered on the door with both fists. “Mrs Bevin!”

There was silence from beyond the door which remained steadfastly shut. Kicking the front step in frustration, Arthur retreated back to his car. She’d have to come out again some time. He had little else to do but wait.


	11. Chapter 11

Tearing his eyes away from the screen again, Andy consulted the post-it note that he had found on his desk this morning. He squinted at the string of letters and numbers. Was than an R or a D? He had been scrolling through the CID database for some time now and couldn’t for the life of him find the form he’d been asked to fill in. And he thought there’d been bureaucracy back in uniform.

“Who ordered this?”

He was torn from his search by the arrival in the office of DI Winslow, DI Robinson’s replacement. She’d been parachuted in from the West Midlands and had made it clear what she thought of her predecessor’s management style. She was waving a piece of paper in the air.

“Who ordered this missing persons report?” she asked again when she was met by blank faces.

Andy froze in his seat and tried to plaster an innocent expression on his face.

“Someone in this team ordered a missing persons report,” Winslow snapped, turning in a circle and focusing an interrogative gaze on each member of her baffled team.

Andy took a deep breath and pushed back his chair. “It was me, ma’am,” he admitted.

She turned to glare at him. “Who are you?”

“DC Davidson,” Andy introduced himself, swallowing nervously. “Well, not quite DC, not officially yet.”

“And why did you order this report Not-Quite-DC Davidson?” Winslow enquired.

“I had a tip off, ma’am,” Andy told her. “From someone at the hospital. The boy was admitted with chest wounds consistent with the two murders we’ve been investigating.”

“A tip-off from whom?”

“Anonymous source, ma’am,” he lied quickly.

“Indeed.” Winslow raised a sceptical eyebrow and Andy met her eye for as long as he dared. Without another word, she turned and disappeared into her office with the report.

Andy smoothed a hand down his tie and sat back down again with a sinking feeling. He knew he shouldn’t have taken that phone call from Robinson. And yet… He sighed and resumed his search for Form GF456/R80.

*

The consultant seemed to be taking a tortuously long time sorting through the paperwork on his desk. Ianto huddled in the adjacent chair, his heart pulsing painfully in his throat. He couldn’t remember when he’d last felt this tense. He really hoped the delay didn't mean that yet another medical professional was going to have to insert something into him. He'd rather hoped that could return to being Jack's domain. Finally, the consultant spun his swivel chair to face him.

“Well, it’s good news, Mr Jones,” he announced. “It’s not cancer.”

“Oh.” Ianto’s breath rushed out like a balloon deflating. His throat loosened and his shoulders relaxed for the first time in days.

“You have acute prostatitis and cystitis,” the consultant continued. “I’m putting you on a four-week course of antibiotics which should clear it up.”

“Right.” Ianto blinked, still processing. “Great. Thank you.”

The consultant tore off a slip with a flourish and handed it over. “Here’s your prescription.”

Ianto stared down at it, noticing that his hands were shaking. “Thank you,” he managed as he stood.

The consultant had already swivelled back to his computer. “Oh, and don’t worry about the erections Mr Jones,” he added. “There’s no medical reason for that. Probably just stress from worrying about what was wrong. I’m sure they’ll be back soon.”

Ianto paused at the door, cheeks burning. “Ok, thank you,” he squeezed out before leaving the room. Closing the door behind him, he stood for a long while in the middle of the hospital corridor, clutching his prescription and staring at the floor. So – not dying after all. That was good then. He closed his eyes and let out another deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose before opening them again and making his way down the corridor in search of the pharmacy.

*

Gwen’s instinctive reaction was to reach for her own mobile when she heard the phone ringing. She frowned at it for a good few seconds before realising that it was the landline on Ianto’s desk ringing. Huh. That hardly ever rang. She reached over, nearly toppling out of her seat, and grabbed the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Cooper?” asked a voice she couldn’t quite place.

“Yeah?”

“Arthur Robinson,” the voice introduced itself. “I’ve found the boy’s mother. Surname Bevin. She knows more than she’s letting on but she won’t tell me.”

“Address?” Gwen asked, clambering down from her seat and grabbing the pen and handy block of post-its beside Ianto’s computer.

Jack had his coat on before Gwen had finished telling him about Arthur’s call. She followed him down the steps towards the door.

“Where’s Ianto?” Jack asked, as he straightened his collar and stepped into the lift.

“I think he’s at the hospital.” Gwen avoided his eye and focused instead on zipping up her jacket.

“Still?” Jack queried.

Gwen swallowed. “He’s, uh, keeping an eye on the boy,” she lied.

After a moment’s pause, in which she almost thought Jack had bought it, or was at least going to let it go, he spoke. “Gwen - is Ianto ill?” Jack asked softly, his voice betraying an anxiety she’d never heard in it before.

She bit her lip. “He asked me not to say anything. You should ask him yourself.”

“I did,” Jack told her plaintively. “He said he was fine.”

She looked up into his worried eyes as the lift jolted to a stop. She gave Jack’s arm a squeeze as they made their way up the cold stone corridor to the tourist office. “Then maybe he is,” she reassured him. “I’ll give him a call.”

Jack didn’t reply but strode ahead of her along the quayside as she held her phone to her ear. It went straight to voicemail and she left a message telling him where to meet them. If Ianto had told Jack he was fine, that meant he must be, didn’t it?

*

Jack hammered on the front door of Number 17, fake warrant card at the ready. Eventually, it opened a crack and a tearful woman’s face appeared. Behind her, Jack could see two children hovering in the hallway with pale, terrified faces.

“I already told your colleague everything I know,” Mrs Bevin informed him, and went to close the door.

Jack shoved a strong hand against it to stop her. “I don’t believe you,” he insisted.

“Leave me alone!” She tried to push the door closed but it was a fruitless endeavour.

“Two people have died Mrs Bevin!” Jack snapped at her. “Your own son nearly died. You have to help us. What do you know?”

There was a pause before she slowly relaxed her grip on the door. “My husband,” she admitted. “He’s part of a cult.”

“Arrival?” Gwen enquired.

“Yes,” Mrs Bevin confirmed, surprise registering on her face that they already knew.

“Where is your husband?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know,” she told them. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday evening.”

“Do you know where they meet?”

“Yes.” She nodded helplessly, as though finally relieved that someone was going to sort this mess out for her. “At the community hall.”

“Take us there,” Jack requested firmly.

*

The edge of the plastic chair dug into Michael’s thighs as he leant over in his seat. He ground his fists into his eyes. The last message he’d received from Sandy had said that Luke would live. But he couldn’t shake the image of his son’s terrified, betrayed eyes. He thought of Stan and Caitlin’s bodies, flopping lifeless into the Taff, and the blood everywhere. And where was Jesus? Shouldn’t he be here by now? Hadn’t they made enough sacrifices?

He was dimly aware of the voices around him. No matter how hard he rammed his fists into his eyes, he couldn’t grind away Luke’s wide, petrified eyes. Even when the others were discussing what to do next, he could hear only Sandy’s screaming and sobbing on his voicemail. He was too much of a coward to answer her calls.

“Michael!”

Tony’s voice finally snapped him out of his waking nightmare. He lifted his head and stared at Tony’s stony face with bloodshot eyes.

“The orb is angry because we didn’t finish the job with Luke,” Tony was telling them. “We need to get him from the hospital and finish the sacrifice.”

Michael shook his head, swinging it heavily from side to side as the tears finally began to fall. “No,” he whispered. “No. He’s my son.”

There was a quiet clearing of a throat beside him. “I…I think I agree with Michael,” Martin ventured hesitantly. “We’ve gone too far.”

“You both helped dump Stan and Caitlin’s bodies,” Tony reminded them threateningly.

No one spoke.

Tony slipped on a pair of leather gauntlets and lifted up the orb. It was glowing with a new intensity. He regarded Michael coldly, the light from the orb burning in his steely eyes. “Perhaps you should be the next sacrifice?” he suggested.

*

The community hall was just an ordinary, drab building squatting amongst the residential houses on the outskirts of Llandaff. Nothing about the stained white walls and faded posters curling on the noticeboard suggested what was going on inside. The SUV skidded to a halt in the gravel car park and Jack and Gwen leapt out. Sandy stayed sitting in silent shock in the back seat, watching as a fleet of police cars drew up, lights flashing but sirens off.

Ianto stepped out of his own car and joined Jack and Gwen as they approached the hall. Taking his Webley from its holster, Jack gave his team a nod and they burst in through the double doors.

In the centre of the hall stood a man, holding a brilliant burning orb above his head. A semi-circle of mesmerised followers surrounded him, gazing up at it in awe.

“Put that down!” Jack yelled.

The man turned at the interruption and four of the group scattered, turning over their plastic chairs and running for the fire doors at the back of the hall. Ianto and Gwen shot after them; Ianto got a grip on one with dreadlocks and Gwen caught the anorak of another. Two uniformed police officers intercepted the other two as they barrelled in through the side doors.

The two remaining followers remained where they were, shoulders slumped in resignation: one in a suit and one nervously adjusting his glasses. They came quietly when officers approached with cuffs.

The man with the orb fixed Jack with a chilling stare that made him shiver. He’d seen those looks far too many times before. Holstering his gun, Jack rushed forward, grabbing at the orb, biting his lip against the pain as it seared into his palms.

“No,” the man screamed, struggling against him. “You shall not defile it!”

“Give it up already,” Jack hissed. For a while, the two of them grappled with the orb in the centre of the hall until Jack finally succeeded in wrestling it away from the man. He became aware of a uniformed police officer approaching.

“I’ll take it from here.”

Jack glanced across to see it was Gwen’s old friend, Andy. “Thanks.” He dropped the orb to the floor, where it began to hiss on the polished wood.

“Come on now, sir,” Andy encouraged.

“Back off.” The man produced a ceremonial dagger from behind his back and waved it in Andy’s direction as though it were a sword.

“Put that down, please sir,” Andy requested calmly. “This won’t end well.”

“No,” the man agreed. “It won’t.” And he lifted the dagger and plunged it into his chest.

“Shit!” Andy rushed forward and grabbed him as he slumped to the floor. “Somebody call an ambulance!”

As Jack watched Andy cradling the man’s body on the floor, he somehow knew it was too late. There was only way these cases ever ended. The man twitched and his lifeless head fell back limply over Andy’s arm. Jack shook his head with a sigh and looked down to examine his palms. They were red raw, the skin melted away, but they would heal quick enough.

Before he could hide them, Ianto was at his side, gently lifting his hands and frowning. “Jack,” he admonished softly.

“They’ll be fine soon,” Jack dismissed him, but didn’t pull away, welcoming the tenderness as his skin began to itch whilst it knitted back together. 

Observing the scene around him, Jack realised that Mrs Bevin had entered the hall. She watched silently as her husband was led out in handcuffs, eyes cast down at the floor as he passed her. As the doors swung closed behind him, she stood frozen to the spot, staring blankly as Andy lowered the bloody body to the floor and stood, brushing his palms down the front of his uniform.

Jack turned to Gwen. “I think you should take Mrs Bevin to the hospital,” Jack told her. “She should be with her son.”


	12. Chapter 12

Jack made his way past the police officers loading the cult members into their cars and found Ianto by the SUV, carefully locking the stone away in a heat-proof containment unit. Jack sat down on the open boot and watched as Ianto slid the unit back into a secure position.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?” Jack asked.

“With what?” Ianto replied, paying unnecessary attention to the padlock on the box.

“With you!” Jack exploded. “I know something’s wrong. I managed to get that much out of Gwen but she said I should ask you.”

Ianto finally let the padlock drop. He sighed and sat down beside Jack.

“I’m fine,” he explained, looking at his hands and not at Jack. “I thought it was something serious but turns out it’s just a bit of an infection. I’ve got some antibiotics for it. I’m fine, really.”

“Oh.” Now it was Jack’s turn to examine his hands. His palms were pink and shiny and still healing fast. Eventually, he glanced sideways at Ianto. “Why did you tell Gwen and not me?”

“Because.” Ianto shrugged awkwardly. “I don’t know. She knows what it’s like to deal with normal people problems. And anyway, I didn’t want you to freak out about my mortality.”

“I wouldn’t freak out,” Jack protested. At Ianto’s sceptical raised eyebrow, he insisted, “I wouldn’t!” Ianto smiled and Jack frowned before dropping his gaze again. “I should be the one you talk to about that sort of thing.” He felt his ears warming, hearing the vulnerability in his own voice. “I’m your boyfriend.”

He looked up again to find Ianto rolling his eyes. “I’m sorry,” Ianto apologised. “I’ll tell you next time. I promise.”

“You’d better.” Jack mock-scowled before giving Ianto’s shoulder a playful push. “Come on, let’s get this thing back to the Hub.”

He stood up and made his way around to the driver’s door as Ianto slammed the boot down and climbed into the passenger seat beside him.

*

Gwen stood in the hospital corridor, watching Sandy Bevin at her son’s bedside. She hunched forward over the bed, clutching the hand of her sleeping child as the monitors beeped steadily around them. Watching them, Gwen felt that tug at the centre of her chest that had become more frequent over the past year.

She did want a child. Even if the world was scary and dangerous. She wanted someone of her own to love and protect. Maybe it was time to talk to Rhys. And after that, she’d have to talk to Jack about maternity leave. Or possibly Ianto. He’d be more discreet and definitely more knowledgeable about Torchwood employment practices. Either way, it was time.

*

In a way, Ianto thought, this was a fitting venue for this conversation. This was the very same bar in which he had met Arthur for a drink five months ago. So much had changed since then. That night had been unbearably hot and the waterfront bar had been packed, the patio doors thrown open and the decking full of after-work drinkers. Tonight, the doors were firmly shut and only a few hardy smokers braved the slippery decking, where strings of fairy lights swung violently in the strong wind.

“What will you do now?” Ianto asked, taking a sip of his orange juice. No alcohol with his antibiotics. Despite Ianto’s protestations that nobody actually read the leaflets that came with prescription drugs, Jack had read it from cover-to-cover and was monitoring Ianto’s dietary intake like a hawk.

“I’m going abroad,” Arthur replied, tapping his fingers against his own glass of overpriced European lager. “Vietnam.”

“Seems a bit drastic,” Ianto observed. The last time they’d been here, Ianto had been unsuccessfully attempting to slip retcon into Arthur’s whisky. On reflection, perhaps that hadn’t been the massive screw-up Ianto had initially thought it to be.

“I’m going to go on the sex offenders register Ianto,” Arthur reminded him. “My solicitor tells me that most likely I’ll be getting a suspended sentence. I’ll never work in this country again.” He shrugged. “Not doing anything worthwhile, anyway.”

“I suppose.”

“I’ve got a nice little job lined up as head of security for a Swedish millionaire,” Arthur told him. “I’ll be just fine.”

Ianto regarded Arthur across the table. With his rigid posture, square jaw and confidence, he fit right in at a bar like this. Men like Arthur Robinson would always land on their feet. “I’m sure you will,” Ianto agreed.

Arthur looked over Ianto’s shoulder. “Oh, look who it is.”

Ianto turned to see Jack walking into the bar, coat flapping dramatically as always in the gust of wind he brought in with him. He caught sight of them and sauntered over. “Fancy seeing you guys here,” he greeted them, grinning as he pulled up a stool and perched himself beside Ianto.

“Did you need something Jack?” Ianto asked pointedly.

“No,” Jack admitted. “Just thought I’d come hang out with you guys.” He slung an arm around Ianto’s shoulder; casual but possessive. Ianto shook his head but he didn’t really mind. It was nice to pass over the mantel of jealousy to Jack for once.

Arthur gave a knowing smile and downed the rest of his lager. “I should get going. I’ve got an early meeting with my solicitor.” He slid off his stool and handed Ianto a business card. “Call me, email me; keep in touch.”

Ianto took the card and shook Arthur’s outstretched hand. “Thanks for your help.”

“Jack.” Arthur blew him a kiss, grinned and swaggered out of the bar.

Jack watched him go, mouth open in outrage. “Can you believe that guy?!”

Ianto gave a quiet snort and drained his glass, as the barman rang the bell for last orders.

Jack looked at his watch. “Shall we go?”

“Yep.” Ianto stood and grabbed his coat off the back of his chair.

“Shall we go back to your place?”

“Yep.” With a grin, Ianto grabbed Jack’s hand and dragged him towards the door. “There’s something I need to test out.”

“Ok,” Jack agreed happily, letting Ianto pull him out of the bar and into the stormy night.


End file.
